According to Yossi Klein Halevi, while the majority of Israelis believe that the greatest current threat to Israel is a nuclear Iran, many if not most American Jews believe it is Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank. The two communities also divide over Israel’s sporadic wars with Hamas and Hizballah:

Israelis believe that, while none of these [mini-wars] are in themselves existential, their cumulative effect surely is. The purpose of the terror groups is to defeat us through exhaustion and self-doubt, confronting us with the choice between defending ourselves in inevitably ugly wars that lead to Israel’s increased isolation, or forfeiting our right to defend ourselves and causing Israelis to despair of our future in the Middle East.

As a result, Israelis have relearned the instinct of uniting under threat. We may go at each other viciously during election campaigns, but as soon as the rockets of Hamas or Hizballah start falling on the home front, Israel becomes an instant family. But that Israeli consensus no longer extends to the Diaspora, where voices opposing Israel—especially during our asymmetrical conflicts—are growing. . . .

At stake is nothing less than our ability to function as a people—one of the great achievements of the Zionist revolution. And so we are left with this challenge: how to remain faithful to our most deeply held truths about Israel’s predicament, while remaining faithful to our mutual covenant as a people.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.